


Be Thee Worthy

by Havoc_frost123



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Green Lantern (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 14:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20658956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Havoc_frost123/pseuds/Havoc_frost123
Summary: Lyarra Stark discovers that the Old Gods are not so dead and buried in the dark embrace of the Wolfswood.





	Be Thee Worthy

She knew it was a mistake within the first hour. Seven Hells, she knew within the first ten minutes when her horse left the well trodden mud of the road and the forest engulfed them both. She knew when the sneering face of Theon did more to blind her than the encroaching darkness and the embrace of the trees diluted and whisked away the waning light of the day.

She knows this and yet she continues on. 

Away from her home of Winterfell, from it’s ancient walls and the life giving heat of it's fires, away from the words of a noble’s son made hostage that ran through her like an iron blade. 

_ You’re just a mistake, Lyarra Snow, a bastard kept here by a Father who’ll never give you your Mother's name, just like he won't give you his own to go with his blood. _

A taunt and a cut from a resentful man held close and yet still apart from those who’d come to be his keepers, not unlike Lyarra in a sense. But Theon Greyjoy has a family, however distant they may be. His blood is rich and fully noble, unlike Lyarra's. He has a destiny, a plan, a title and Lyarra Snow is just another bastard of the North, no matter who her Father is.

So Lyarra rides in the darkness of a northern night, her steed unsure but obedient as it tramples the floor of the Wolfswood beneath it's hooves. On and on they ride, until the tears in Lyarra’s eyes are cold as ice and the hurt in her heart is a dull ache instead of a barely staunched wound that threatens to tear open.

And when her head overcomes the folly of her heart and the realization of what she’s done dawns upon her, it is then that her horse clips a rock unseen, body twisting in a way that’s fatal to the beast and its rider. Lyarra flies from her mount, a human arrow loosed in the darkness to impact on the harsh and unforgiving ground. A broken neck, a twisted limb, a caved in skull, all will end her as well as any sword or lance, the only difference is how long she gets to regret her foolishness.

But the ground she lands upon is not the unyielding and unbreakable end she fears and Lyarra Snow does not die in the dark with the cold burrowing down to her very bones and a broken body a last reminder of her failings. No, instead the earth parts beneath her, an entrance broken open easily by the weight and speed of a woman loosed into the air. 

It is a narrow hole in the world, meant to be descended with care and respect for it's ridges and sharpened edges. Lyarra’s fall is not blessed with such things, it is harsh and sudden and her bones break where the rock does not. Sharp pains rock her arms and ribs, the feeling of falling a spice to her sudden terror and the razor edges of blackened rock cut the soft flesh of her lilac skin.

And then Lyarra meets a patch of ground that does not yield and her world nearly ends far quicker than it began.

**\---**

Time slips from her mind, what little snow that makes it through the descent she has uncovered blankets her face while hot blood seeps from her body, yet the cold of night and the frozen water falling upon her face is enough to keep her violet eyes from slipping shut permanently.

She will die, her body too broken to even think about climbing out of the pit and her mind a weakened castle assailed by the unceasing assault of pain coming from everywhere. She has died and no one will know the fate of Eddard Stark’s bastard daughter, lost to the clutches of the Wolfswood. An omen and a warning for all the Noble houses of the North burdened with their base born offspring.

_ No. _

The pain is tremendous, it sends her heaving back to the ground as she tries to sit, to fight the curse of fortune that has left in her in this Godsforsaken pit of darkness. Her blood glistens in the few wisps of moonlight that manage to pierce the cover of the forest above and reach her, her entire body protesting as she screams with a broken voice and bloody teeth and crimson colouring her vision.

But Lyarra does not stop, she cannot, she won’t. It may be the hardest thing she ever done in her six and ten years of living but Lyarra manages to sit, to let her breath return to her in greedy, painful gasps while her eyes adjust to the darkness of the cave and the face that returns her distorted gaze.

A heart tree, frozen in time by stone and covered in harsh carvings that seems to glow in the darkness. The work of a mason, an imitation rather than the withered husk that it would be had it been real and left to rot in this forgotten place. More sculptures of the sacred trees flank it and Lyarra twists her head as much as she can stomach to see that more surround her on all sides.

They all hold carvings similar to the first, each shimmering in ripples of faint light the more that Lyarra looks. _ Runes, not carvings_. She’s overheard enough of Maester Luwin’s teachings to recognise the archaic scratches and indents in the stone trees as those holy symbols of the First Men, stolen enough of his learned and wise words from behind barred doors to know the tales of their noble savagery, marked by forgotten and wondrous magic that led mere men to become legends and forge the Age of Heroes.

So Lyarra struggles under the weight of her pain and the gaze of the stoic stone trees, grits her teeth as she makes to stand on legs that protest the very thought of what she tries to do. A vain effort, she knows, but one that she’ll make all the same. None shall find her corpse being one of quiet agonsing acceptance of her fate, they shall see the cuts in the rock where her fingernails broke while she tried to make the climb, shall find her frozen visage and see the deep partings in her pale face to know Lyarra made the Stranger and the Old Gods fight to take her life.

And so she falls. For minutes maybe, or perhaps it is the long march of agonising hours, only the howl of the winds above her accompany the cries of pain as her palms rip open on the jagged edges of the cave structure and the dull thuds of a broken woman struggling to escape her fate.

But each time she falls, she makes to rise, head bloody but unbowed and heart rushing to rebuff the demands of death’s so very close embrace. She climbs, she falls and Lyarra tries again. A fool’s effort undoubtedly, what steel inhabits her spirit is not equal to the broken state of her bones and the punishment her lungs take with every ragged breath. Yet again she tries, with eyes that can barely see and with fingers she can no longer feel. Lyarra tries and tries.

And falls and falls.

“A noble effort, daughter of Snow and Ice.” The voice echoes around her soon to be corpse, thunder in her ears and power in the words that not even her immense pain can drown out. “But you will be lesser for it, brought low at such a price.”

She’s flat on her back, head struggling to look for the owner of the voice when the eyes of every heart tree crack open to let forth an emerald glow. Her heart beats against broken ribs as the glow coalesces into spears of illumination, beams of light racing towards each other like a volley of arrows, colliding in a great burst of power above her that forces her eyes closed lest she go blind from the spectacle of it all.

And in the next moment, Lyarra Snow sees heart trees no longer, now she stares above at the entrance to the cave, the night sky obscured by the head of a dragon with eyes kissed by the glow of two green stars.

“You intrigue me, blood of Stark, so defiant and so keen. So long it is now that one of _ yours _ I have seen.”

The Dragon speaks and Lyarra hears the words, impossible words of madness that must be overwhelming her to have conjured such a thing. She’s died, surely, there’s no other explanation for it that would make sense to her clouded mind. And yet the Dragon does not vanish when her mind wills it to be gone, its imposing eyes and the streaks of lightning dancing across it's emerald scales remain perfectly intact. 

And so does the heat of it's breath, so beautifully warm and welcoming to a woman waiting to die in the cold darkness of the North.

“Ah, the girl is weak, not in mind but in form. Your bones are broken, your blood escapes you and all over your flesh is torn. This will not do for me, no _not at all_. I shall heal you of your woes and you shall stand before me, to tell me of your fall.”

Blessed heat washes over Lyarra, not born of fiery death and flames but of a river of glowing butterflies that erupts from within the Dragon's maw, creatures unseen in the snow kissed North that come to land upon her bloodied skin, flapping their wings as they sink deep beneath her flesh and down into her very bones. She feels them start to mend her body, utter _ warmth _ rushing through her hands and feet, of blood rushing in her ears and Gods above the pain is beaten back and she can _ breathe_.

Lyarra gulps down air, greedy for the chill of it in her lungs, for the life it represents while she coughs and rushes to her feet, balance unsteady and mind racing. The dragon _ chuckles _ and Lyarra feels a chill that has nothing to do with the cold of the cave.

“So tell me, spawn of Stark, what business have you here? What drove you to this place, what reason, what fear?”

The dragon pulses with light and it's through him that she sees just how large the cave is. Ripples of lighting that belong in the clouds of the Stormlands race under its scales from snout to tail tip, the black of the cave rock growing distant as light dances upon it, jutting outwards in all directions as it travels the length of the beast.

Lyarra's lungs have just started to work again and yet the air they grasp is simply not enough for the sight she sees. A vast cavern containing the carvings of _ hundreds _ of Heart trees, each marked with ancient runes and each feeding light into the vast ethereal body of a decidedly not extinct Dragon.

"Wh-what are you?"

The Dragon’s eyes tighten, it's neck allowing it's head to swing either side of her, each of the emerald suns embedded in it's skull studying her like she imagines the direwolves of old must have studied their prey. It isn't a look reserved for a meal, she somehow knows, more one given when studying an oddity that should not be. 

And then the Dragon smiles with teeth as long as great swords and puts it's snout a scarce foot away from her chest, the cold banished from her senses entirely from the heat of it all.

"The girl has questions, I understand, but she shall answer mine _ first _ as I know she can."

Its mouth doesn't move, no words come from it's belly and yet Lyarra hears them clear as her own thoughts, an incomprehensible sense of _ will _behind the polite demand, compelling yet gentle in how it seems to quieten her nerves.

"I-my name is Lyarra Snow,” She stumbles but with her head unbowed. “Daughter of Lord Eddard Stark. I hail from Winterfell." 

The Dragon does not move for several terrifying seconds, enough to make her feel that she's failed a test of some sort, then it's jaws open wide and it's tongue licks the bloodied rock upon which she was only moments ago ready to die on. It licks once, twice, and then a great ripple of cerulean colours it's face which snaps up to look at her once more, emerald green burning out the deep blue slowly till only it's original colour remains.

“A Stark's blood you have but Father to you he is not, your blood reveals much to me, Lyarra Snow, it runs as cold as it does hot.”

What. _ What? _ She had told no lies, she may be a bastard but surely the Gods are not so cruel to have this Dragon, this beautiful healing beast confirm those tales whispered in the dark places of Winterfell, that all bastards are lying, scheming punishments for their sires made flesh.

“I speak no lies.” Lyarra bites out with more anger than courage. “I do not know my mother but He is my father, I have his blood if not his name.”

The dragon nods slowly, rising to stand upon four powerful legs covered in the most beautiful scales Lyarra has ever seen while gently, wings of translucent light spread to surround her, to shield her from the still falling snow and whatever cold the dragons breath cannot obliterate. And his eyes, God’s his eyes look unfairly _ kind_.

“Would you like to know of her, girl of six and ten? Would you hear the tale of the laughing tree, of how she plucked the hearts of men?”

Her breath quickens at the words, disbelief taking hold once she understands the implication of what has been said. How long has she wondered, how long has she pleaded with the Lord of Winterfell to speak of the woman who had entranced him enough to join with her and give Lyarra the gift of life. Was she beautiful? Was she so kind and pure that his honour, a shield he used against the cruelties of the world, was helpless to her virtuous nature? Was her hair as dark as Lyarra’s?

Did she care?

What could this creature born of light and legends know of such a woman having been confined to this cave for what must have been thousands of years? Could she ever not say yes to such an offer in case he spoke true? And what of this laughing tree? A heart tree perhaps? What did the symbol of the Old Gods have to do with a southron mother who doubtless kept the Seven?

“How could you possibly know?” She demands of her savior. “What are you? How is any of this real? Do I truly stand here, hale and whole, before a Dragon made from light or is this all a dream I’m having as my last breath slips from me?”

The Dragon huffs, breath rippling against her torn clothes and against the strength of her freshly renewed legs. Gone is the kindness from his gaze, in its place stands fury and zeal. She’s seen it before, in the eyes of her uncle Benjen when he speaks of those who live beyond the Wall and their savage ways and deeds.

“The Grey does not have you, my will ensures you remain alive.” The Dragon bellows. “And by my power it never will have you, you will be mine, you shall thrive.” 

Runes erupt outwards from the great claws of it's legs, the very stone upon which she stands glowing with a song of power that men have not heard for eons, thought lost to the very winds of winter all those years ago. The blood that had spilled from her broken flesh boils and burns from it, all from the sheer unending will of the scaled beast which now marks the cave as his own and looks through her eyes into the very soul which gives her life.

"As for me, I have many names, some too strange to tell, yet I shall grace you with the oldest, my new friend from Winterfell." 

And then, _ Gods, _ then she _ sees_. 

Her mind conjures a man of scraped armour and heavy furs, a thick beard decorating his face and a broken sword held in his hand as he runs through snow so deep it threatens to swallow him alive. She sees great beasts of ice and their many legs behind him, their riders loosing arrows of crystalline death at the warrior that still calls the living kin. He runs hard, never faltering even as the cold seeks to run him through and add him to it's army of endless night and terrors.

Another vision, this time the man is bloodied but still strong, unbroken as he kneels before the progeny of the forest and their diminutive forms bid him to rise, one of their number cradling a ring of emerald green in both hands with the care of a mother holding a babe not yet a name day old. The man holds out a hand, gloved and bloody and the ring shoots towards it, wrapping around his third finger and wreathing him in flames that share its colour.

He yells, a bellow born not of pain and trickery, but of feeling an emotion he has long denied himself. The flames burn away his clothes and decrepit armour, his helm melting in the blaze as plates of conjured shamrock steel replace what the flames incinerate. And then they spread to his sword, the great weapon becoming whole before her mind’s eye, a hundred lanterns worth of light erupting from it. A great beacon reforged, to burn away the endless night.

And then the vision, no, the _ memory _ is gone and Lyarra feels tears flowing freely down her face. 

"I am the Green, Avatar of all things living that you see.” The Dragon says, nuzzling her chest ever so gently with his snout. “Where life thrives and men draw breath, that is where I be. I am the barked flesh of Weirwoods and the smallest flower you can find, they are all me, you see, all flourish by my design."

"You are the Old Gods." She dares to whisper.

"Yes I am, Lyarra Stark. I have been waiting for you so long down here, locked away in the dark.”

The words are saccharine, soft and mellow in her ears and not at all meant for her. Somehow, through some means, this incomprehensibly powerful and gentle beast has extended a kindness she cannot accept, the Gods have made a mistake and given to her what belongs to a true Stark, like her brother Robb or either of her sisters. Nobility can only be gained through blood and great feats for the ages, neither of which lyarra can lay claim to.

“I’m not a Stark,” She lets out, as quiet as a bird in flight but a Wolf's howl in her ears. “I’m a bastard and I bear the name of Snow.”

There are no flames, no cry of rage, the Green does not recede from her eyes and the heat does not vanish back into the stone trees from whence it came. There is merely a snout that moves from her stomach to beneath her chin, lifting her head and eyes to look into the Dragon’s own.

“In steel of a smiling weirwood did your mother ride, beneath plates of armour and unmatched skill did she from your father hide. She caught his heart, the Dragon Prince, a wonder he’d never seen, and so Lyanna Stark ran away with him, far from her betrothed, a man she felt too brutish, too mean.”

A woman in green, a silver prince, a tourney with a madman made king watching, a mystery knight, a stolen kiss and a hundred more. Again Lyarra sees.

“Targaryen and Stark, married under a tree of mine. A purer love between two souls you shall rarely find. You are their daughter, Lyarra, your uncle kept you safe. A final promise to his sister, a Dragon sworn protection by a Rafe.”

Impossible. There have been too many jeers, too many silences from her supposed father, too many reminders of her station for her to have been blessed with blood as rich as this. But then again, it's exactly the kind of lie a man like Eddard Stark would keep. Honor is intangible, untouchable, and while it may hold sway over the minds of some, to a Stark, honor will never trump the bond of family.

Not to a man she knows now in her soul loved her enough to lie to the world.

“My-my mother was Lyanna Stark and my father was Rhaegar Targaryen.” Even as the words leave her lips she struggles to believe them. Such things only happen in songs and myths, not in reality with all it's unwritten laws and unspoken expectations.

“Yes, Lyarra,” The Green chuckles. “You are not a bastard, not now, not ever.” 

“You said you’d been waiting for me, why? I may have noble blood but I have nothing beyond it, I will never be anything more than a wife to a man chosen for me, how can I be someone worth waiting for?”

Again the kindness leaves and for the first time, thunder accompanies the Dragon's lightning. A fury accenting it’s gentle nature, power kept calm unless provoked and Lyarra doubts that even Balerion the Black Dread could come close to the fury of a God such as this.

“The Grey stirs, Lyarra.” The Green says with a tone that could fell a castle. “It hungers for it's cold embrace to swallow the world. It comes now for the world of men once more and it's champion has grown ever stronger in the time since he was driven back into the lands of Always Winter.”

More visions grow bright in her eyes. Those horrible beasts she saw, men dressed in silvery ice and with swords and spears that iron could not hope to defend against. And behind them, an endless horde of corpses, eyes blue and flesh falling from bones that cannot possibly be sustained by anything other than dark and terrible magic.

“But you, you will be _ my _ champion. You will defend life itself from the cold, you will drive the dead back to their graves and you will silence the Grey once more. You will do it because you have the heart of Dragon and Wolf both, because you have always been what the Wolves and Dragons strive to be and you will do it because no one else can.”

And before that endless tide of undead she sees herself, a flame that melts away the snow, that cuts the clouds open and brings forth the light of summer upon an endless frozen waste. She leads an army, brave souls one and all that march for their lives, their families but beyond all, for _ her_. Their sigil is hers, marking every sword, every breast plate, every helmet, every saddle upon which three dragons ride. A direwolf within a circle belonging to the ways of the man who thousands of years ago stood in her stead.

Of the ring on her finger that marks her as the chosen of the living.

“I give to you my power, as I did to the one who wielded it before you. Your enemy will be without number and without fear but you, Lyarra Stark, you will be the renewing flame that burns away the darkness and brings forth this worlds rebirth.”

And from within the impenetrable hide of the Dragon does the ring of the visions appear, gliding without a thought for the laws of nature towards her. It asks a question as it waits and Lyarra answers with the raising of her right hand and the extension of her middle digit. Her acceptance is not in question, how could it ever be? The seal is made and the ring makes its home at the base of her finger, bonding with her flesh so that none may remove it. Then Lyarra is reborn in fire.

The flames ride the length of her arm, springing forth from the ring, singing her flesh and knitting it anew in emerald heat before her vision is consumed by the inferno, searing pain washing over her neck and across her face while the rest of her body is renewed.

And then, in the wavering darkness with eyes made molten and the stillness of a cave unseen for thousands of years does Lyarra and the Green speak once more.

"In the brightest of days, in the longest of nights, there one will stand, to protect all with light. With sword and shield and hope burning bright, arise Lyarra, with the Green Lanterns might."

**Author's Note:**

> A one shot I wrote to try and help get rid of writers block and because that Finale was terrible.


End file.
